Antti Alatalo

About

My name is Antti Alatalo. I was born in 1984 in Tornio, Finland. After serving in military I’ve been living in more than many places. Just to mention few places where I’ve lived so far

Ylläs

Helsinki

Kos, Greece

Bangkok, Thailand

Phuket, Thailand

Currently I am living in sunny (but sometimes windy) Malta. I love travelling, and I love the fact that I’ve been able to do “slow travelling”. Slow travelling, meaning that I’ve been able to stick around places I’ve been longer periods of time. I truly consider myself as a World Citizen.

Because I have spent major amount of time in foreign cultures it has opened up my mind, both personally and professionally. I am not religious about my opinions or knowledge. I’ve never been the one who enjoys sitting in the school, but that isn’t to say that I don’t love learning new things. I believe, that there’s always going to be someone smarter or more experienced than me, therefore I believe I can learn something from everyone.

“One of my greatest assets, is the ability to ask the right questions. I soak myself on the knowledge that surrounds me. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have the chance to meet very smart and successful people, who have been very kind to share their knowledge with me. I truly feel like I have been standing on the shoulders of giants ”.

I never look back or question my past decisions, What is done it is done and there is no reason to look back, since there is too many good things waiting ahead.

SEO-Experimenter

in 2014 I decided that it was time to start looking for a career outside of restaurant industry. I sold all my apartment in Helsinki and about 80 % of my possessions and took one way ticket to Thailand. During that year I landed my first job in SEO and it was love at first sight. I was absolutely amazed how much work and effort goes behind seo.

“ Why do I love seo? The answer is simple; search engines evolve all the time, therefore seo and seo´s have to evolve too. The fact that, search engines keep evolving keeps my ego in check – the things I know (or think I now) might be outdated tomorrow. ”.

I’ve never been a fan of terms such as expert or specialist. Being an expert or specialist signals to me, that you are close to knowing all of certain matter.

Rather, I like to call myself seo-experimenter. The term does not refer to any specific seo-philosophy (e.g. blackhat, whitehat or tinhat), rather it signals, that I’m willing to take calculated risk for greater good. Occasionally, this might mean blowing off my eyebrows (figuratively), but in a long run it get’s better results.

My seo-philosophy is that there are no quick wins in seo. Seo is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Careful planning, correct data, innovations and hint of luck will get the desired results.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and travelling

To excel in life there needs to be some physical activities and problem solving happening on the personal time as well. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is both – it is physically very demanding and you are trying to solve a problem, which you’re opponent and throws at you.

I started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in 2010, and by coincidence on the same year I moved to Phuket. At first, I was scared of training in foreign country, but that experience turned out to be something that I didn’t expect. By training bjj is foreign country, I met some many nice people, that I wouldn’t have otherwise ever met. Some of these people are my dearest friends.

“I instantly got hooked on travelling and training Jiu-Jitsu in different countries. I still carry my BJJ gi with me everytime I travel somewhere. ”

On July 2016, I opened up my own Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy in Malta. The Academy is called Arete Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Malta. It is hard work to set up a jiu jitsu academy in a country, where there is practically no existing base at all. Slowly but surely our numbers are growing. Because I’ve been treated so well when visiting different Bjj-academies all over the world, I wanted to give something back. Everyone who is travelling in Malta can train 1 week for free. It is absolutely fantastic to get people coming in and train with us from all over the world.

Latest posts

For some reason, today I had a massive itch to write. It's been over six months since I last wrote something here.I've been very fortunate to experience so many new situations. Life has been very exciting for me. Here's a quick summary of the things I'm working on....

. It has been exactly close to 5 months since I left my day job and somehow I'm still here and doing quite alright. So much has happened in the past months, that I'm going to have to break it down to different parts: Career BJJ Side-projects Let's get to it. Career...

Recently I executed a quite successful marketing campaign for my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym. Because the results were so good, I decided to share my method here on my blog. There is some nitty gritty technical stuff involved, but you can easily find people to do these...

Today I resigned from Catena Media. We still have a good relationship, but I just want to move forward now. They handled the situation very maturely, and I have only good things to say about them. Catena was a wonderful place for growth and development. Now, I have...